Cross objects de-duplication

ABSTRACT

Some embodiments of the present invention include a method for determining duplicate records in multiple objects and may include combining records associated with a first object with records associated with a second object to generate a third object, wherein the first object is related to the second object; performing de-duplication on the third object to generate a combined group of duplicate sets; and from the combined group of duplicate sets, identifying at least one duplicate set associated with both the first object and the second object based on the duplicate set having at least one record associated with the first object and at least one record associated with the second object.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is related to commonly owned U.S. application Ser. No.15/052,382, filed Feb. 24, 2016 and U.S. application Ser. No.15/052,556, filed Feb. 24, 2016, both of which are incorporated hereinby reference in their entireties.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains materialwhich is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has noobjection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent documentor the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and TrademarkOffice patent file or records, but otherwise reserves copyright rightswhatsoever.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates generally to data processing and morespecifically relates to identifying related information.

BACKGROUND

The subject matter discussed in the background section should not beassumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in thebackground section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the backgroundsection or associated with the subject matter of the background sectionshould not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the priorart. The subject matter in the background section merely representsdifferent approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions.

Database systems may include databases that have millions of records. Tomaintain the efficiency and integrity of the databases, searches may beperformed to identify and remove duplicate records. Comparison ofrecords against all the other records one-by-one to determineduplication may be significantly time consuming and computing intensive.As such, database designers continuously try to develop techniques thatcan improve the performance of the database by identifying related orduplicated records.

BRIEF SUMMARY

For some embodiments, methods and systems for identifying duplicaterecords in multiple objects associated with a database system mayinclude combining records associated with a first object with recordsassociated with a second object to generate a third object, wherein thefirst object is related to the second object; performing de-duplicationon the third object to generate a combined group of duplicate sets; andfrom the combined group of duplicate sets, identifying at least oneduplicate set associated with both the first object and the secondobject based on the duplicate set having at least one record associatedwith the first object and at least one record associated with the secondobject. Other aspects and advantages of the present invention can beseen on review of the drawings, the detailed description and the claims,which follow.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The included drawings are for illustrative purposes and serve only toprovide examples of possible structures and process steps for thedisclosed techniques. These drawings in no way limit any changes in formand detail that may be made to embodiments by one skilled in the artwithout departing from the spirit and scope of the disclosure.

FIG. 1 shows a diagram of an example computing system that may be usedwith some embodiments.

FIG. 2 shows a diagram of an example network environment that may beused with some embodiments.

FIG. 3A shows an example of two objects in a database system that mayinclude duplicate records, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 3B shows an example of de-duplicating two objects in a databasesystem, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 4 shows an example of a cross objects de-duplication module thatmay be used to identify and remove duplicate records, in accordance withsome embodiments.

FIG. 5 shows an example of identifying duplicate records in multipleobjects, in accordance with some embodiment.

FIG. 6A shows an example of a representative object, in accordance withsome embodiments.

FIG. 6B shows an example of identifying duplicate records in multipleobjects using representative records, in accordance with someembodiments.

FIG. 7A shows a flowchart of an example process for identifying crossobjects duplicate records, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 7B shows a flowchart of an example process for identifying crossobjects duplicate records using representative records, in accordancewith some embodiments.

FIG. 8A shows a system diagram illustrating architectural components ofan applicable environment, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 8B shows a system diagram further illustrating architecturalcomponents of an applicable environment, in accordance with someembodiments.

FIG. 9 shows a system diagram illustrating the architecture of amultitenant database environment, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 10 shows a system diagram further illustrating the architecture ofa multi-tenant database environment, in accordance with someembodiments.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Applications of systems and methods for efficiently identifyingduplicate records in multiple objects will be described with referenceto example embodiments. These examples are being provided solely to addcontext and aid in the understanding of the present disclosure. It willthus be apparent to one skilled in the art that the techniques describedherein may be practiced without some or all of these specific details.In other instances, well known process steps have not been described indetail in order to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the present disclosure.Other applications are possible, such that the following examples shouldnot be taken as definitive or limiting either in scope or setting.

In the following detailed description, references are made to theaccompanying drawings, which form a part of the description and in whichare shown, by way of illustration, specific embodiments. Although theseembodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable one skilled inthe art to practice the disclosure, it is understood that these examplesare not limiting, such that other embodiments may be used and changesmay be made without departing from the spirit and scope of thedisclosure.

As used herein, the term “multi-tenant database system” refers to thosesystems in which various elements of hardware and software of thedatabase system may be shared by one or more customers. For example, agiven application server may simultaneously process requests for a greatnumber of customers, and a given database table may store rows for apotentially much greater number of customers.

The described subject matter may be implemented in the context of anycomputer-implemented system, such as a software-based system, a databasesystem, a multi-tenant environment, or the like. Moreover, the describedsubject matter may be implemented in connection with two or moreseparate and distinct computer-implemented systems that cooperate andcommunicate with one another. One or more embodiments may be implementedin numerous ways, including as a process, an apparatus, a system, adevice, a method, a computer readable medium such as a computer readablestorage medium containing computer readable instructions or computerprogram code, or as a computer program product comprising a computerusable medium having a computer readable program code embodied therein.

In general, businesses use a CRM (Customer Relationship Management)system (also referred to as a database system or system) to managebusiness relationships and information associated with the businessrelationship. For example, this may include customer and prospectcontact information, accounts, leads, and opportunities in one centrallocation. The information may be stored in a database as objects. Forexample, the CRM system may include “account” object, “contact” objectand “opportunities” object.

The “account” object may include information about an organization orperson (such as customers, competitors, and partners) involved with aparticular business. The “contact” object may include contactinformation, where each contact may be an individual associated with an“account”. The “opportunities” object includes information about a saleor a pending deal. Each object may be associated with fields. Forexample, the “accounts” object may include fields such as “company”,“zip”, “phone number”, “email address”, etc. The “contact” object mayinclude fields such as “first name”, “last name”, “phone number”,“accountID”, etc. The “accountID” field of the “contact” object may bethe ID of the account that is the parent of the contact. The“opportunity” object may include fields such as “amount”, “accountID”,etc. The “accountID” field of the “opportunity” object may be the ID ofthe account that is associated with the opportunity. Each field may beassociated with a field value. For example, a field value for the “zip”field may be “94105”.

There may be millions of records (e.g., individual contacts) in anobject (e.g., contact object). When a new contact is inserted into thecontact object, a match rule (or matching rule) may be applied toidentify duplicate contacts. A match rule may use criteria to determinehow closely a field on a new or edited record matches the same field onan existing record, and, ultimately, whether the two records match. Amatch key may be used by a match rule to quickly return a list ofpossible duplicate records. The match key may be based on one or morefields. For example, a match key that is based on a “company” field anda “zip” field in an “accounts” object may be “company (2,6) zip (1,3)”with the numbers inside the brackets referring to number of tokens andnumber of characters per token.

Before the match keys are applied to any objects, the field values ofthose objects may be normalized. For example, if the object includes thefield “company”, then the normalization for the field “company” mayinclude expanding the acronyms, having the first letter of each word bein lowercases, removing the suffices such as “Corporation”,“Incorporated”, “Inc”, “Limited”, “Ltd.”, etc., and removing the stopwords such as “and”, “the”, “of”. Using this normalization example, thefield value “Intel Corp.” is normalized to become “intel”, and the fieldvalue “IBM” is normalized to become “international business machine”.

After the field values are normalized, some standard or pre-definedmatch keys are automatically applied when the match rule is activated.An example of a pre-defined match key is “company (2, 6) zip (1, 3)”that is applied to the “account” object. For example, if the companyname is “salesforce.com”, then applying the first portion “company (2,6)” of the match key results in the string “salesf”, and if the companyzip code is “94105-5188”, then applying the second portion “zip (1, 3)”of the match key results in the string “941”. The resulting key istherefore “salesf941”. The process of applying the standard match keysmay be referred to as indexing.

When the match rule is activated, the match key is automatically appliedto all existing records so that when the match rule runs, the databasesystem can look for duplicate candidates among records with the samekey. For example, when the above example match key is applied to the“company” and “zip” fields, the key “sales941” is generated to matchduplicate records having the same value in the “company” and “zip”fields. Using the match key to identify duplicate candidates can preventusers from saving duplicate records based on the value of one or morefields.

Using match rules to identify duplicate candidates may be applicablewhen adding a new record or an edited record into an object to determinehow closely a field on the new or edited record matches the same fieldon an existing record and whether the two records match. However, thisapproach may not be applicable when an organization has millions ofrecords that need to be processed to remove duplicate records (alsoreferred to as de-duplication or de-dupe). The identification of theduplicate records can be challenging and may significantly affect theperformance of the CRM system.

The disclosed embodiments may include systems and methods foridentifying duplicate records across multiple objects in a databasesystem and may include combining records associated with a first objectwith records associated with a second object to generate a third object,wherein the first object is related to the second object; performingde-duplication on the third object to generate a combined group ofduplicate sets; and from the combined group of duplicate sets,identifying at least one duplicate set associated with both the firstobject and the second object based on the duplicate set having at leastone record associated with the first object and at least one recordassociated with the second object.

The disclosed embodiments may include an apparatus for identifyingduplicate records in multiple objects and include one or more processorsand a non-transitory computer readable medium storing a plurality ofinstructions, which when executed, cause the one or more processors tocombine records associated with a first object with records associatedwith a second object to generate a third object, wherein the firstobject is related to the second object; perform de-duplication on thethird object to generate a combined group of duplicate sets; and fromthe combined group of duplicate sets, identify at least one duplicateset associated with both the first object and the second object based onthe duplicate set having at least one record associated with the firstobject and at least one record associated with the second object.

The disclosed embodiments may include a computer program productcomprising computer-readable program code to be executed by one or moreprocessors when retrieved from a non-transitory computer-readablemedium, the program code including instructions to combine recordsassociated with a first object with records associated with a secondobject to generate a third object, wherein the first object is relatedto the second object; perform de-duplication on the third object togenerate a combined group of duplicate sets; and from the combined groupof duplicate sets, identify at least one duplicate set associated withboth the first object and the second object based on the duplicate sethaving at least one record associated with the first object and at leastone record associated with the second object.

While one or more implementations and techniques are described withreference to an embodiment in which identifying duplicate records acrossmultiple objects is implemented in a system having an application serverproviding a front end for an on-demand database service capable ofsupporting multiple tenants, the one or more implementations andtechniques are not limited to multi-tenant databases nor deployment onapplication servers. Embodiments may be practiced using other databasearchitectures, i.e., ORACLE®, DB2® by IBM and the like without departingfrom the scope of the embodiments claimed.

Any of the above embodiments may be used alone or together with oneanother in any combination. The one or more implementations encompassedwithin this specification may also include embodiments that are onlypartially mentioned or alluded to or are not mentioned or alluded to atall in this brief summary or in the abstract. Although variousembodiments may have been motivated by various deficiencies with theprior art, which may be discussed or alluded to in one or more places inthe specification, the embodiments do not necessarily address any ofthese deficiencies. In other words, different embodiments may addressdifferent deficiencies that may be discussed in the specification. Someembodiments may only partially address some deficiencies or just onedeficiency that may be discussed in the specification, and someembodiments may not address any of these deficiencies.

The described subject matter may be implemented in the context of anycomputer-implemented system, such as a software-based system, a databasesystem, a multi-tenant environment, or the like. Moreover, the describedsubject matter may be implemented in connection with two or moreseparate and distinct computer-implemented systems that cooperate andcommunicate with one another. One or more implementations may beimplemented in numerous ways, including as a process, an apparatus, asystem, a device, a method, a computer readable medium such as acomputer readable storage medium containing computer readableinstructions or computer program code, or as a computer program productcomprising a computer usable medium having a computer readable programcode embodied therein.

FIG. 1 is a diagram of an example computing system that may be used withsome embodiments of the present invention. The computing system 102 maybe used by a user to identify and remove duplicate records in multipleobjects associated with a multi-tenant database environment. Forexample, the multi-tenant database environment may be associated withthe services provided by Salesforce.com®.

The computing system 102 is only one example of a suitable computingsystem, such as a mobile computing system, and is not intended tosuggest any limitation as to the scope of use or functionality of thedesign. Neither should the computing system 102 be interpreted as havingany dependency or requirement relating to any one or combination ofcomponents illustrated. The design is operational with numerous othergeneral purpose or special purpose computing systems. Examples ofwell-known computing systems, environments, and/or configurations thatmay be suitable for use with the design include, but are not limited to,personal computers, server computers, hand-held or laptop devices,multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based systems, set top boxes,programmable consumer electronics, mini-computers, mainframe computers,distributed computing environments that include any of the above systemsor devices, and the like. For example, the computing system 102 may beimplemented as a mobile computing system such as one that is configuredto run with an operating system (e.g., iOS) developed by Apple Inc. ofCupertino, Calif. or an operating system (e.g., Android) that isdeveloped by Google Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.

Some embodiments of the present invention may be described in thegeneral context of computing system executable instructions, such asprogram modules, being executed by a computer. Generally, programmodules include routines, programs, objects, components, datastructures, etc. that performs particular tasks or implement particularabstract data types. Those skilled in the art can implement thedescription and/or figures herein as computer-executable instructions,which can be embodied on any form of computing machine readable mediadiscussed below.

Some embodiments of the present invention may also be practiced indistributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remoteprocessing devices that are linked through a communications network. Ina distributed computing environment, program modules may be located inboth local and remote computer storage media including memory storagedevices.

Referring to FIG. 1, the computing system 102 may include, but are notlimited to, a processing unit 120 having one or more processing cores, asystem memory 130, and a system bus 121 that couples various systemcomponents including the system memory 130 to the processing unit 120.The system bus 121 may be any of several types of bus structuresincluding a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, and alocal bus using any of a variety of bus architectures. By way ofexample, and not limitation, such architectures include IndustryStandard Architecture (ISA) bus, Micro Channel Architecture (MCA) bus,Enhanced ISA (EISA) bus, Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA)locale bus, and Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus also knownas Mezzanine bus.

The computing system 102 typically includes a variety of computerreadable media. Computer readable media can be any available media thatcan be accessed by computing system 102 and includes both volatile andnonvolatile media, removable and non-removable media. By way of example,and not limitation, computer readable media may store information suchas computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules orother data. Computer storage media include, but are not limited to, RAM,ROM, EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digitalversatile disks (DVD) or other optical disk storage, magnetic cassettes,magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices,or any other medium which can be used to store the desired informationand which can be accessed by computing system 102. Communication mediatypically embodies computer readable instructions, data structures, orprogram modules.

The system memory 130 may include computer storage media in the form ofvolatile and/or nonvolatile memory such as read only memory (ROM) 131and random access memory (RAM) 132. A basic input/output system (BIOS)133, containing the basic routines that help to transfer informationbetween elements within computing system 102, such as during start-up,is typically stored in ROM 131. RAM 132 typically contains data and/orprogram modules that are immediately accessible to and/or presentlybeing operated on by processing unit 120. By way of example, and notlimitation, FIG. 1 also illustrates operating system 134, applicationprograms 135, other program modules 136, and program data 137.

The computing system 102 may also include other removable/non-removablevolatile/nonvolatile computer storage media. By way of example only,FIG. 1 also illustrates a hard disk drive 141 that reads from or writesto non-removable, nonvolatile magnetic media, a magnetic disk drive 151that reads from or writes to a removable, nonvolatile magnetic disk 152,and an optical disk drive 155 that reads from or writes to a removable,nonvolatile optical disk 156 such as, for example, a CD ROM or otheroptical media. Other removable/non-removable, volatile/nonvolatilecomputer storage media that can be used in the exemplary operatingenvironment include, but are not limited to, USB drives and devices,magnetic tape cassettes, flash memory cards, digital versatile disks,digital video tape, solid state RAM, solid state ROM, and the like. Thehard disk drive 141 is typically connected to the system bus 121 througha non-removable memory interface such as interface 140, and magneticdisk drive 151 and optical disk drive 155 are typically connected to thesystem bus 121 by a removable memory interface, such as interface 150.

The drives and their associated computer storage media discussed aboveand illustrated in FIG. 1, provide storage of computer readableinstructions, data structures, program modules and other data for thecomputing system 102. In FIG. 1, for example, hard disk drive 141 isillustrated as storing operating system 144, application programs 145,other program modules 146, and program data 147. Note that thesecomponents can either be the same as or different from operating system134, application programs 135, other program modules 136, and programdata 137. The operating system 144, the application programs 145, theother program modules 146, and the program data 147 are given differentnumeric identification here to illustrate that, at a minimum, they aredifferent copies.

A user may enter commands and information into the computing system 102through input devices such as a keyboard 162, a microphone 163, and apointing device 161, such as a mouse, trackball or touch pad or touchscreen. Other input devices (not shown) may include a joystick, gamepad, scanner, or the like. These and other input devices are oftenconnected to the processing unit 120 through a user input interface 160that is coupled with the system bus 121, but may be connected by otherinterface and bus structures, such as a parallel port, game port or auniversal serial bus (USB). A monitor 191 or other type of displaydevice is also connected to the system bus 121 via an interface, such asa video interface 190. In addition to the monitor, computers may alsoinclude other peripheral output devices such as speakers 197 and printer196, which may be connected through an output peripheral interface 190.

The computing system 102 may operate in a networked environment usinglogical connections to one or more remote computers, such as a remotecomputer 180. The remote computer 180 may be a personal computer, ahand-held device, a server, a router, a network PC, a peer device orother common network node, and typically includes many or all of theelements described above relative to the computing system 102. Thelogical connections depicted in

FIG. 1 includes a local area network (LAN) 171 and a wide area network(WAN) 173, but may also include other networks. Such networkingenvironments are commonplace in offices, enterprise-wide computernetworks, intranets and the Internet.

When used in a LAN networking environment, the computing system 102 maybe connected to the LAN 171 through a network interface or adapter 170.When used in a WAN networking environment, the computing system 102typically includes a modem 172 or other means for establishingcommunications over the WAN 173, such as the Internet. The modem 172,which may be internal or external, may be connected to the system bus121 via the user-input interface 160, or other appropriate mechanism. Ina networked environment, program modules depicted relative to thecomputing system 102, or portions thereof, may be stored in a remotememory storage device. By way of example, and not limitation, FIG. 1illustrates remote application programs 185 as residing on remotecomputer 180. It will be appreciated that the network connections shownare exemplary and other means of establishing a communications linkbetween the computers may be used.

It should be noted that some embodiments of the present invention may becarried out on a computing system such as that described with respect toFIG. 1. However, some embodiments of the present invention may becarried out on a server, a computer devoted to message handling,handheld devices, or on a distributed system in which different portionsof the present design may be carried out on different parts of thedistributed computing system.

Another device that may be coupled with the system bus 121 is a powersupply such as a battery or a Direct Current (DC) power supply) andAlternating Current (AC) adapter circuit. The DC power supply may be abattery, a fuel cell, or similar DC power source needs to be rechargedon a periodic basis. The communication module (or modem) 172 may employa Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) to establish a wirelesscommunication channel. The communication module 172 may implement awireless networking standard such as Institute of Electrical andElectronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard, IEEE std. 802.11-1999,published by IEEE in 1999.

Examples of mobile computing systems may be a laptop computer, a tabletcomputer, a Netbook, a smart phone, a personal digital assistant, orother similar device with on board processing power and wirelesscommunications ability that is powered by a Direct Current (DC) powersource that supplies DC voltage to the mobile computing system and thatis solely within the mobile computing system and needs to be rechargedon a periodic basis, such as a fuel cell or a battery.

FIG. 2 shows a diagram of an example network environment that may beused with some embodiments of the present invention. Network environment400 includes computing systems 205 and 212. One or more of the computingsystems 205 and 212 may be a mobile computing system. The computingsystems 205 and 212 may be connected to the network 250 via a cellularconnection or via a Wi-Fi router (not shown). The network 250 may be theInternet. The computing systems 205 and 212 may be coupled with servercomputing system 255 via the network 250.

The computing systems 205 may include application module 208. A user mayuse the computing system 205 and the application module 208 to connectto and communicate with the server computing system 255 and log intoapplication 257 (e.g., a Salesforce.com® application). For example, theuser may log into the application 257 to initiate the process ofdetermining common attributes among multiple objects, identifying andremoving duplicate records from the multiple objects in a CRM system.The server computing system 255 may be coupled with database 270. Theserver computing system 255 may be associated with an entity (e.g.,Salesforce.com®).

FIG. 3A shows an example of two objects in a database system that mayinclude duplicate records, in accordance with some embodiments. In thisexample, the first object 305 may be an account object, and the secondobject 310 may be a lead object. The first object (e.g., account object)305 may include information about companies or entities such as companyname, address, phone number, billing address, shipping address, etc. Thesecond object (e.g., lead object) 310 may include person lead. Theperson lead may include name of a person, the company they work for,their address, phone number, email address, etc. Generally, a person maybe a lead (thus a lead record) when the person works for a company thatis not currently a customer of an organization, and the account objectdoes not have any account record associated with that company.

The first object 305 and the second object 310 may be related to oneanother. For example, when a lead becomes a qualified lead, the leadrecord may be converted into an account record using a conversionprocess that automatically maps the fields from the lead object such asthe second object 310 to the fields in the account object such as thefirst object 305. For example, the company that a person works for inthe lead object may be mapped to an account name in the account object,the address of a company that a person works for in the lead object maybe mapped to a billing address in the account object, a website of acompany that a person works for in the lead object may be mapped to awebsite in the account object, etc. The overlapped area 315 in FIG. 3Aconveys that the two objects 305 and 310 may have some fields thatinclude similar information. As another example, an employee object maynot be related to the account object even though an employee record maybe associated with a company name. This is because there is noexpectation that the company that the employee works for would becomeits own customer.

FIG. 3B shows an example of de-duplicating two objects in a databasesystem, in accordance with some embodiments. In this example, the firstobject 305 may include duplicate records and may be processed by thede-duplication module 320 to identify duplicate records 350. Similarly,the second object 310 may include duplicate records and may be processedby the de-duplication module 320 to identify duplicate records 355. Thede-duplication of the first and second objects 305 and 310 may beacceptable if the first and second objects 305 and 310 are unrelated.However, because they are related, it may be possible to have a recordin the second object 310 be considered as a duplicate of a record in thefirst object 305. For example, if the account object has three accountrecords, two of which are associated with the account name “company X”while the third account record is associated with the account name“company Z”, then the two account records associated with the “companyX” can be identified as duplicate records of one another. Similarly, ifthe lead object has three lead records, two of which are associated withthe company name “company Y” while the third lead record is associatedwith the company name “company Z”, then the two lead records associatedwith the “company Y” can be identified as duplicate records of oneanother. Thus, the account record associated with the account name“company Y” and the lead record associated with the company name“company Y” are not identified as duplicate records using the exampleshown in FIG. 3B. When a conversion is performed, the lead recordassociated with the company name “company Y” would be converted to anaccount record having the account name as “company Y,” causing aduplicate to exist in the account object

FIG. 4 shows an example of a cross objects de-duplication module thatmay be used to identify and remove duplicate records, in accordance withsome embodiments. Cross objects de-duplication module 400 may beassociated with a computing system that is used by an administrator or auser who is responsible for removing duplicate records in multipleobjects that are related to one another. The multiple objects may bestored in a database such as database 270 shown in FIG. 2. The multipleobjects may be associated with a web-based customer relationshipmanagement (CRM) database system 916 shown in FIG. 9.

The cross objects de-duplication module 400 may include objectgeneration module 405 configured to generate a combined object thatincludes records from the multiple objects. For example, the objectcreation module 405 may combine records in the first object 305 such asthe account object with records in the second object 310 such as thelead object to generate a combined object. The generation of thecombined object may be based on mapping the fields of one object to thefields of another object. The fields that are considered to includesimilar information may be mapped directly to one another. For example,the account name field in the account object may be considered toinclude similar information as the company name field in the leadobject. For some embodiments, filler values may be used for fields thatdo not include similar information.

For some embodiments, an indicator may be associated with each of therecords in the combined object. The indicator may be configured toindicate which of the individual objects the record originates from. Forexample, an account record from the account object may include anindicator to indicate that it is associated with the account object, anda lead record from the lead object may include an indicator to indicatethat it originates from the lead object.

The cross objects de-duplication module 400 may include a de-duplicationmodule 320 configured to identify duplicate records in the combinedobject. Duplicate records in the combined object may be identified basedon the fields that include similar information. The de-duplicationmodule 320 may use any of the available de-duplication techniques toidentify the duplicate records. For some embodiments, the de-duplicationmodule 320 may be configured to use the de-duplication techniquesdisclosed in commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No.15/052,382, filed Feb. 24, 2016 and incorporated herein by reference.For some embodiments, the de-duplication module 320 may be configured touse the de-duplication techniques disclosed in U.S. application Ser. No.15/052,556, filed Feb. 24, 2016 and incorporated herein by reference.

FIG. 5 shows an example of identifying duplicate records in multipleobjects, in accordance with some embodiment. The combined object 505 maybe generated by the object generation module by combining the firstobject 305 with the second object 310. After the combined object 505 isprocessed by the de-duplication module 320, the cross objects duplicates510 may be identified. The cross objects duplicates 510 may includeduplicate records within the first object, duplicate records in thesecond object and duplicate records across the first object and thesecond object. Because each of the records in the cross objectsduplicates 510 include an indicator identifying the object it originatesfrom, they may be easily grouped together to form the duplicate recordsin the first object 350, the duplicate records in the second object 355and the duplicate records across the objects 515. It may be noted thatthis is different from the example shown in FIG. 3B where only theduplicate records in the first and second objects are identified.

FIG. 6A shows an example of a representative object, in accordance withsome embodiments. It may be possible for de-duplication module 320 toidentify multiple sets of duplicate records (referred to herein asduplicate sets) in an object. A duplicate set may include multiplerecords that are considered to be duplicate records of one another. Aduplicate set may also include a unique record by itself. Referring toFIG. 3B, the de-duplication module 320 may identify the duplicaterecords 350 associated with the first object 305 and the duplicaterecords 355 associated with the second object 310. Examples of theduplicate records 350 and 355 are shown in FIG. 6A as duplicate sets.The first object 305 may include the duplicate sets 601, 602 and 603.The second object 310 may include the duplicate sets 604, 605, 606 and607. When a duplicate set includes multiple records, any of the recordsmay be selected as a representative record. When a duplicate setincludes one unique record, that record is selected as a representativerecord. Using this selection approach, one example group ofrepresentative records 610 may include the records B1, C, D1, E, F, B2and D2.

FIG. 6B shows an example of identifying duplicate records in multipleobjects using representative records, in accordance with someembodiments. For some embodiments, a representative record from eachduplicate set may be selected to form a representative object 615. Forsome embodiments, each of the representative record may be associatedwith an indicator to indicate the object that the record originatesfrom. The representative object 615 may then be processed by thede-duplication module 320 to identify duplicate records within therepresentative object 615. If a representative record from the firstobject 305 is identified as a duplicate of a representative record fromthe second object 310, then it may be concluded that the rest of therecords in the duplicate set associated with those representativerecords are also duplicate records of one another. If a representativerecord from the first object 305 is identified as a unique record, thenit may be concluded that there is no cross-object duplicate of thatrepresentative record in the second object 310. Similarly, if arepresentative record from the second object 310 is identified as aunique record, then it may be concluded that there is no cross-objectduplicate of that representative record in the first object 305. Usingthe example representative records 610 of FIG. 6A as the content of therepresentative object 615, the de-duplication module 320 may identifythat the representative record B1 from the duplicate set 601 associatedwith the first object 305 is a duplicate of the representative record B2from the duplicate set 606 associated with the second object 310.Similarly, the de-duplication module 320 may identify that therepresentative record D1 from the duplicate set 603 associated with thefirst object 305 is a duplicate of the representative record D2 from theduplicate set 607 associated with the second object 310. The crossobject duplicate sets {B1, B2} and {D1, D2} in this example may then besaved in the cross objects duplicates 620. Because each of the recordsin the cross objects duplicates 620 is a representative record, it maybe determined that other records in the duplicate set associated withthe representative record are also duplicate records of the remainingrepresentative record in the cross object duplicate set. For example,after the de-duplication module 320 identifies that the representativerecords B1 and B2 are duplicate records, then it can be determined thatthe records A, B1, G, B2 and I are duplicate records of one another. Itmay be noted that the cross objects duplicate sets of {B1, B2} and {D1,D2} may not be identified without forming the representative object 615and performing de-duplication on the representative object 615.

FIG. 7A shows a flowchart of an example process for identifying crossobjects duplicate records, in accordance with some embodiments. Theexample process 700 may be used to evaluate records in multiple objectsto identify duplicate records. The multiple objects may be associatedwith an organization and may need to be incorporated into a CRM databasesystem. The multiple objects may be related to one another. For example,a relationship may exist when records in one object may be convertedinto a record in the other object such that the conversion may causeduplicate records to exist in the other object. The conversion mayinclude mapping fields from one object to fields in the other object.The conversion may include using the same information (e.g., companyname) from a record (e.g., lead record) in one object in the record(e.g., account record) of the other object.

The process may start at block 710 where a third object is generated bycombining a first object and a second object. The combination of the twoobjects may include using filler values to enable the records from boththe first object and the second to have a consistent structure in thethird object. Indicator may be added to each record to identify theobject it originates from.

At block 720, de-duplication may be performed on the third object toidentify duplicate sets. For some embodiments, the de-duplication may bebased on information that is common between the first object and thesecond object. For example, the information associated with the companyname field in the lead record may be considered to be common informationwith the information in the account name field in the account record.The de-duplication operations may not need to be aware whether a recordin the third object is associated with the first object or the secondobject.

At block 725, duplicate sets associated with the first object may beidentified from all of the duplicate sets. This may be based ondetermining that the indicators of all the records in a particularduplicate set indicate that they originate from the first object.

At block 730, duplicate sets associated with the second object may beidentified from all of the duplicate sets. This may be based ondetermining that the indicators of all the records in a particularduplicate set indicate that they originate from the second object.

At block 735, duplicate sets associated with both the first object andthe second object may be identified from all of the duplicate sets. Thismay be based on determining that the indicators of all the records in aparticular duplicate set indicate that some originate from the firstobject and some originate from the second object.

FIG. 7B shows a flowchart of an example process for identifying crossobjects duplicate records using representative records, in accordancewith some embodiments. The example process 750 may start at block 755where de-duplication operations may be performed on a first object togenerate a first group of duplicate sets associated with the firstobject. At block 760, the de-duplication operations may be performed ona second object to generate a second group of duplicate sets associatedwith the second object.

At block 765, a representative object is generated by combining arepresentative record from each of the duplicate sets in the first groupand in the second group of duplicate sets. The process of combining therepresentative records from the duplicate sets to form therepresentative object may be similar to the process of combining therecords in the first object and second object to form the third object.Indicator may be used to identify where a record in the representativeobject originates from.

At block 770, the de-duplication operations may be performed on arepresentative object to identify duplicate records within therepresentative object. It may be noted that if duplicate records areidentified, these duplicate records are cross object duplicate recordsfrom both the first object and the second object.

It may be noted that the processes described in FIGS. 7A and 7B mayidentify duplicate records across two objects, the identification maynot be based on all of the fields associated with the two objects. Assuch, two records may be identified as being duplicate records eventhough they may not be exact duplicate records of one another. Further,it may be possible that even though the process described in FIG. 7Aidentifies two records from the same object as duplicate records of oneanother, it may be acceptable keep to both records due to businesslogic. For example, it may be possible to have two duplicate leadrecords each with a different person's first and last name but with thesame company name. However, it may not be acceptable to have twoduplicate account records both with the same account name.

FIG. 8A shows a system diagram 800 illustrating architectural componentsof an on-demand service environment, in accordance with someembodiments. A client machine located in the cloud 804 (or Internet) maycommunicate with the on-demand service environment via one or more edgerouters 808 and 812. The edge routers may communicate with one or morecore switches 820 and 824 via firewall 816. The core switches maycommunicate with a load balancer 828, which may distribute server loadover different pods, such as the pods 840 and 844. The pods 840 and 844,which may each include one or more servers and/or other computingresources, may perform data processing and other operations used toprovide on-demand services. Communication with the pods may be conductedvia pod switches 832 and 836. Components of the on-demand serviceenvironment may communicate with a database storage system 856 via adatabase firewall 848 and a database switch 852.

As shown in FIGS. 8A and 8B, accessing an on-demand service environmentmay involve communications transmitted among a variety of differenthardware and/or software components. Further, the on-demand serviceenvironment 800 is a simplified representation of an actual on-demandservice environment. For example, while only one or two devices of eachtype are shown in FIGS. 8A and 8B, some embodiments of an on-demandservice environment may include anywhere from one to many devices ofeach type. Also, the on-demand service environment need not include eachdevice shown in FIGS. 8A and 8B, or may include additional devices notshown in FIGS. 8A and 8B.

Moreover, one or more of the devices in the on-demand serviceenvironment 800 may be implemented on the same physical device or ondifferent hardware. Some devices may be implemented using hardware or acombination of hardware and software. Thus, terms such as “dataprocessing apparatus,” “machine,” “server” and “device” as used hereinare not limited to a single hardware device, but rather include anyhardware and software configured to provide the described functionality.

The cloud 804 is intended to refer to a data network or plurality ofdata networks, often including the Internet. Client machines located inthe cloud 804 may communicate with the on-demand service environment toaccess services provided by the on-demand service environment. Forexample, client machines may access the on-demand service environment toretrieve, store, edit, and/or process information.

In some embodiments, the edge routers 808 and 812 route packets betweenthe cloud 804 and other components of the on-demand service environment800. The edge routers 808 and 812 may employ the Border Gateway Protocol(BGP). The BGP is the core routing protocol of the Internet. The edgerouters 808 and 812 may maintain a table of IP networks or ‘prefixes’which designate network reachability among autonomous systems on theInternet.

In one or more embodiments, the firewall 816 may protect the innercomponents of the on-demand service environment 800 from Internettraffic. The firewall 816 may block, permit, or deny access to the innercomponents of the on-demand service environment 800 based upon a set ofrules and other criteria. The firewall 816 may act as one or more of apacket filter, an application gateway, a stateful filter, a proxyserver, or any other type of firewall.

In some embodiments, the core switches 820 and 824 are high-capacityswitches that transfer packets within the on-demand service environment800. The core switches 820 and 824 may be configured as network bridgesthat quickly route data between different components within theon-demand service environment. In some embodiments, the use of two ormore core switches 820 and 824 may provide redundancy and/or reducedlatency.

In some embodiments, the pods 840 and 844 may perform the core dataprocessing and service functions provided by the on-demand serviceenvironment. Each pod may include various types of hardware and/orsoftware computing resources. An example of the pod architecture isdiscussed in greater detail with reference to FIG. 8B.

In some embodiments, communication between the pods 840 and 844 may beconducted via the pod switches 832 and 836. The pod switches 832 and 836may facilitate communication between the pods 840 and 844 and clientmachines located in the cloud 804, for example via core switches 820 and824. Also, the pod switches 832 and 836 may facilitate communicationbetween the pods 840 and 844 and the database storage 856.

In some embodiments, the load balancer 828 may distribute workloadbetween the pods 840 and 844. Balancing the on-demand service requestsbetween the pods may assist in improving the use of resources,increasing throughput, reducing response times, and/or reducingoverhead. The load balancer 828 may include multilayer switches toanalyze and forward traffic.

In some embodiments, access to the database storage 856 may be guardedby a database firewall 848. The database firewall 848 may act as acomputer application firewall operating at the database applicationlayer of a protocol stack. The database firewall 848 may protect thedatabase storage 856 from application attacks such as structure querylanguage (SQL) injection, database rootkits, and unauthorizedinformation disclosure.

In some embodiments, the database firewall 848 may include a host usingone or more forms of reverse proxy services to proxy traffic beforepassing it to a gateway router. The database firewall 848 may inspectthe contents of database traffic and block certain content or databaserequests. The database firewall 848 may work on the SQL applicationlevel atop the TCP/IP stack, managing applications' connection to thedatabase or SQL management interfaces as well as intercepting andenforcing packets traveling to or from a database network or applicationinterface.

In some embodiments, communication with the database storage system 856may be conducted via the database switch 852. The multi-tenant databasesystem 856 may include more than one hardware and/or software componentsfor handling database queries. Accordingly, the database switch 852 maydirect database queries transmitted by other components of the on-demandservice environment (e.g., the pods 840 and 844) to the correctcomponents within the database storage system 856. In some embodiments,the database storage system 856 is an on-demand database system sharedby many different organizations. The on-demand database system mayemploy a multi-tenant approach, a virtualized approach, or any othertype of database approach. An on-demand database system is discussed ingreater detail with reference to FIGS. 9 and 10.

FIG. 8B shows a system diagram illustrating the architecture of the pod844, in accordance with one embodiment. The pod 844 may be used torender services to a user of the on-demand service environment 800. Insome embodiments, each pod may include a variety of servers and/or othersystems. The pod 844 includes one or more content batch servers 864,content search servers 868, query servers 872, file force servers 876,access control system (ACS) servers 880, batch servers 884, and appservers 888. Also, the pod 844 includes database instances 890, quickfile systems (QFS) 892, and indexers 894. In one or more embodiments,some or all communication between the servers in the pod 844 may betransmitted via the switch 836.

In some embodiments, the application servers 888 may include a hardwareand/or software framework dedicated to the execution of procedures(e.g., programs, routines, scripts) for supporting the construction ofapplications provided by the on-demand service environment 800 via thepod 844. Some such procedures may include operations for providing theservices described herein. The content batch servers 864 may requestsinternal to the pod. These requests may be long-running and/or not tiedto a particular customer. For example, the content batch servers 864 mayhandle requests related to log mining, cleanup work, and maintenancetasks.

The content search servers 868 may provide query and indexer functions.For example, the functions provided by the content search servers 868may allow users to search through content stored in the on-demandservice environment. The Fileforce servers 876 may manage requestsinformation stored in the Fileforce storage 878. The Fileforce storage878 may store information such as documents, images, and basic largeobjects (BLOBs). By managing requests for information using theFileforce servers 876, the image footprint on the database may bereduced.

The query servers 872 may be used to retrieve information from one ormore file systems. For example, the query system 872 may receiverequests for information from the app servers 888 and then transmitinformation queries to the NFS 896 located outside the pod. The pod 844may share a database instance 890 configured as a multi-tenantenvironment in which different organizations share access to the samedatabase. Additionally, services rendered by the pod 844 may requirevarious hardware and/or software resources. In some embodiments, the ACSservers 880 may control access to data, hardware resources, or softwareresources.

In some embodiments, the batch servers 884 may process batch jobs, whichare used to run tasks at specified times. Thus, the batch servers 884may transmit instructions to other servers, such as the app servers 888,to trigger the batch jobs. In some embodiments, the QFS 892 may be anopen source file system available from Sun Microsystems® of Santa Clara,Calif. The QFS may serve as a rapid-access file system for storing andaccessing information available within the pod 844. The QFS 892 maysupport some volume management capabilities, allowing many disks to begrouped together into a file system. File system metadata can be kept ona separate set of disks, which may be useful for streaming applicationswhere long disk seeks cannot be tolerated. Thus, the QFS system maycommunicate with one or more content search servers 868 and/or indexers894 to identify, retrieve, move, and/or update data stored in thenetwork file systems 896 and/or other storage systems.

In some embodiments, one or more query servers 872 may communicate withthe NFS 896 to retrieve and/or update information stored outside of thepod 844. The NFS 896 may allow servers located in the pod 844 to accessinformation to access files over a network in a manner similar to howlocal storage is accessed. In some embodiments, queries from the queryservers 822 may be transmitted to the NFS 896 via the load balancer 820,which may distribute resource requests over various resources availablein the on-demand service environment. The NFS 896 may also communicatewith the QFS 892 to update the information stored on the NFS 896 and/orto provide information to the QFS 892 for use by servers located withinthe pod 844.

In some embodiments, the pod may include one or more database instances890. The database instance 890 may transmit information to the QFS 892.When information is transmitted to the QFS, it may be available for useby servers within the pod 844 without requiring an additional databasecall. In some embodiments, database information may be transmitted tothe indexer 894. Indexer 894 may provide an index of informationavailable in the database 890 and/or QFS 892. The index information maybe provided to file force servers 876 and/or the QFS 892.

FIG. 9 shows a block diagram of an environment 910 wherein an on-demanddatabase service might be used, in accordance with some embodiments.Environment 910 includes an on-demand database service 916. User system912 may be any machine or system that is used by a user to access adatabase user system. For example, any of user systems 912 can be ahandheld computing system, a mobile phone, a laptop computer, a workstation, and/or a network of computing systems. As illustrated in FIGS.9 and 10, user systems 912 might interact via a network 914 with theon-demand database service 916.

An on-demand database service, such as system 916, is a database systemthat is made available to outside users that do not need to necessarilybe concerned with building and/or maintaining the database system, butinstead may be available for their use when the users need the databasesystem (e.g., on the demand of the users). Some on-demand databaseservices may store information from one or more tenants stored intotables of a common database image to form a multi-tenant database system(MTS). Accordingly, “on-demand database service 916” and “system 916”will be used interchangeably herein. A database image may include one ormore database objects. A relational database management system (RDBMS)or the equivalent may execute storage and retrieval of informationagainst the database object(s). Application platform 918 may be aframework that allows the applications of system 916 to run, such as thehardware and/or software, e.g., the operating system. In animplementation, on-demand database service 916 may include anapplication platform 918 that enables creation, managing and executingone or more applications developed by the provider of the on-demanddatabase service, users accessing the on-demand database service viauser systems 912, or third party application developers accessing theon-demand database service via user systems 912.

One arrangement for elements of system 916 is shown in FIG. 9, includinga network interface 920, application platform 918, tenant data storage922 for tenant data 923, system data storage 924 for system data 925accessible to system 916 and possibly multiple tenants, program code 926for implementing various functions of system 916, and a process space928 for executing MTS system processes and tenant-specific processes,such as running applications as part of an application hosting service.Additional processes that may execute on system 916 include databaseindexing processes.

The users of user systems 912 may differ in their respective capacities,and the capacity of a particular user system 912 might be entirelydetermined by permissions (permission levels) for the current user. Forexample, where a call center agent is using a particular user system 912to interact with system 916, the user system 912 has the capacitiesallotted to that call center agent. However, while an administrator isusing that user system to interact with system 916, that user system hasthe capacities allotted to that administrator. In systems with ahierarchical role model, users at one permission level may have accessto applications, data, and database information accessible by a lowerpermission level user, but may not have access to certain applications,database information, and data accessible by a user at a higherpermission level. Thus, different users may have different capabilitieswith regard to accessing and modifying application and databaseinformation, depending on a user's security or permission level.

Network 914 is any network or combination of networks of devices thatcommunicate with one another. For example, network 914 can be any one orany combination of a LAN (local area network), WAN (wide area network),telephone network, wireless network, point-to-point network, starnetwork, token ring network, hub network, or other appropriateconfiguration. As the most common type of computer network in currentuse is a TCP/IP (Transfer Control Protocol and Internet Protocol)network (e.g., the Internet), that network will be used in many of theexamples herein. However, it should be understood that the networks usedin some embodiments are not so limited, although TCP/IP is a frequentlyimplemented protocol.

User systems 912 might communicate with system 916 using TCP/IP and, ata higher network level, use other common Internet protocols tocommunicate, such as HTTP, FTP, AFS, WAP, etc. In an example where HTTPis used, user system 912 might include an HTTP client commonly referredto as a “browser” for sending and receiving HTTP messages to and from anHTTP server at system 916. Such an HTTP server might be implemented asthe sole network interface between system 916 and network 914, but othertechniques might be used as well or instead. In some embodiments, theinterface between system 916 and network 914 includes load sharingfunctionality, such as round-robin HTTP request distributors to balanceloads and distribute incoming HTTP requests evenly over a plurality ofservers. At least as for the users that are accessing that server, eachof the plurality of servers has access to the MTS' data; however, otheralternative configurations may be used instead.

In some embodiments, system 916, shown in FIG. 9, implements a web-basedcustomer relationship management (CRM) system. For example, in someembodiments, system 916 includes application servers configured toimplement and execute CRM software applications as well as providerelated data, code, forms, web pages and other information to and fromuser systems 912 and to store to, and retrieve from, a database systemrelated data, objects, and Webpage content. With a multi-tenant system,data for multiple tenants may be stored in the same physical databaseobject, however, tenant data typically is arranged so that data of onetenant is kept logically separate from that of other tenants so that onetenant does not have access to another tenant's data, unless such datais expressly shared. In certain embodiments, system 916 implementsapplications other than, or in addition to, a CRM application. Forexample, system 916 may provide tenant access to multiple hosted(standard and custom) applications. User (or third party developer)applications, which may or may not include CRM, may be supported by theapplication platform 918, which manages creation, storage of theapplications into one or more database objects and executing of theapplications in a virtual machine in the process space of the system916.

Each user system 912 could include a desktop personal computer,workstation, laptop, PDA, cell phone, or any wireless access protocol(WAP) enabled device or any other computing system capable ofinterfacing directly or indirectly to the Internet or other networkconnection. User system 912 typically runs an HTTP client, e.g., abrowsing program, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer® browser,Mozilla's Firefox® browser, Opera's browser, or a WAP-enabled browser inthe case of a cell phone, PDA or other wireless device, or the like,allowing a user (e.g., subscriber of the multi-tenant database system)of user system 912 to access, process and view information, pages andapplications available to it from system 916 over network 914.

Each user system 912 also typically includes one or more user interfacedevices, such as a keyboard, a mouse, trackball, touch pad, touchscreen, pen or the like, for interacting with a graphical user interface(GUI) provided by the browser on a display (e.g., a monitor screen, LCDdisplay, etc.) in conjunction with pages, forms, applications and otherinformation provided by system 916 or other systems or servers. Forexample, the user interface device can be used to access data andapplications hosted by system 916, and to perform searches on storeddata, and otherwise allow a user to interact with various GUI pages thatmay be presented to a user. As discussed above, embodiments are suitablefor use with the Internet, which refers to a specific globalinternetwork of networks. However, it should be understood that othernetworks can be used instead of the Internet, such as an intranet, anextranet, a virtual private network (VPN), a non-TCP/IP based network,any LAN or WAN or the like.

According to some embodiments, each user system 912 and all of itscomponents are operator configurable using applications, such as abrowser, including computer code run using a central processing unitsuch as an Intel Pentium® processor or the like. Similarly, system 916(and additional instances of an MTS, where more than one is present) andall of their components might be operator configurable usingapplication(s) including computer code to run using a central processingunit such as processor system 917, which may include an Intel Pentium®processor or the like, and/or multiple processor units.

A computer program product implementation includes a machine-readablestorage medium (media) having instructions stored thereon/in which canbe used to program a computer to perform any of the processes of theembodiments described herein. Computer code for operating andconfiguring system 916 to intercommunicate and to process web pages,applications and other data and media content as described herein arepreferably downloaded and stored on a hard disk, but the entire programcode, or portions thereof, may also be stored in any other volatile ornon-volatile memory medium or device, such as a ROM or RAM, or providedon any media capable of storing program code, such as any type ofrotating media including floppy disks, optical discs, digital versatiledisk (DVD), compact disk (CD), microdrive, and magneto-optical disks,and magnetic or optical cards, nanosystems (including molecular memoryICs), or any type of media or device suitable for storing instructionsand/or data. Additionally, the entire program code, or portions thereof,may be transmitted and downloaded from a software source over atransmission medium, e.g., over the Internet, or from another server, ortransmitted over any other conventional network connection (e.g.,extranet, VPN, LAN, etc.) using any communication medium and protocols(e.g., TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS, Ethernet, etc.). It will also be appreciatedthat computer code for implementing embodiments can be implemented inany programming language that can be executed on a client system and/orserver or server system such as, for example, C, C++, HTML, any othermarkup language, Java™, JavaScript®, ActiveX®, any other scriptinglanguage, such as VBScript, and many other programming languages as arewell known may be used. (Java™ is a trademark of Sun Microsystems®,Inc.).

According to some embodiments, each system 916 is configured to provideweb pages, forms, applications, data and media content to user (client)systems 912 to support the access by user systems 912 as tenants ofsystem 916. As such, system 916 provides security mechanisms to keepeach tenant's data separate unless the data is shared. If more than oneMTS is used, they may be located in close proximity to one another(e.g., in a server farm located in a single building or campus), or theymay be distributed at locations remote from one another (e.g., one ormore servers located in city A and one or more servers located in cityB). As used herein, each MTS could include logically and/or physicallyconnected servers distributed locally or across one or more geographiclocations. Additionally, the term “server” is meant to include acomputing system, including processing hardware and process space(s),and an associated storage system and database application (e.g., OODBMSor RDBMS) as is well known in the art.

It should also be understood that “server system” and “server” are oftenused interchangeably herein. Similarly, the database object describedherein can be implemented as single databases, a distributed database, acollection of distributed databases, a database with redundant online oroffline backups or other redundancies, etc., and might include adistributed database or storage network and associated processingintelligence.

FIG. 10 also shows a block diagram of environment 910 furtherillustrating system 916 and various interconnections, in accordance withsome embodiments. FIG. 10 shows that user system 912 may includeprocessor system 912A, memory system 912B, input system 912C, and outputsystem 912D. FIG. 10 shows network 914 and system 916. FIG. 10 alsoshows that system 916 may include tenant data storage 922, tenant data923, system data storage 924, system data 925, User Interface (UI) 1030,Application Program Interface (API) 1032, PL/SOQL 1034, save routines1036, application setup mechanism 1038, applications servers10001-1000N, system process space 1002, tenant process spaces 1004,tenant management process space 1010, tenant storage area 1012, userstorage 1014, and application metadata 1016. In other embodiments,environment 910 may not have the same elements as those listed aboveand/or may have other elements instead of, or in addition to, thoselisted above.

User system 912, network 914, system 916, tenant data storage 922, andsystem data storage 924 were discussed above in FIG. 9. Regarding usersystem 912, processor system 912A may be any combination of processors.Memory system 912B may be any combination of one or more memory devices,short term, and/or long term memory. Input system 912C may be anycombination of input devices, such as keyboards, mice, trackballs,scanners, cameras, and/or interfaces to networks. Output system 912D maybe any combination of output devices, such as monitors, printers, and/orinterfaces to networks. As shown by FIG. 10, system 916 may include anetwork interface 920 (of FIG. 9) implemented as a set of HTTPapplication servers 1000, an application platform 918, tenant datastorage 922, and system data storage 924. Also shown is system processspace 1002, including individual tenant process spaces 1004 and a tenantmanagement process space 1010. Each application server 1000 may beconfigured to tenant data storage 922 and the tenant data 923 therein,and system data storage 924 and the system data 925 therein to serverequests of user systems 912. The tenant data 923 might be divided intoindividual tenant storage areas 1012, which can be either a physicalarrangement and/or a logical arrangement of data. Within each tenantstorage area 1012, user storage 1014 and application metadata 1016 mightbe similarly allocated for each user. For example, a copy of a user'smost recently used (MRU) items might be stored to user storage 1014.Similarly, a copy of MRU items for an entire organization that is atenant might be stored to tenant storage area 1012. A UI 1030 provides auser interface and an API 1032 provides an application programmerinterface to system 916 resident processes to users and/or developers atuser systems 912. The tenant data and the system data may be stored invarious databases, such as Oracle™ databases.

Application platform 918 includes an application setup mechanism 1038that supports application developers' creation and management ofapplications, which may be saved as metadata into tenant data storage922 by save routines 1036 for execution by subscribers as tenant processspaces 1004 managed by tenant management process 1010 for example.Invocations to such applications may be coded using PL/SOQL 34 thatprovides a programming language style interface extension to API 1032. Adetailed description of some PL/SOQL language embodiments is discussedin commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 7,730,478, titled METHOD AND SYSTEMFOR ALLOWING ACCESS TO DEVELOPED APPLICATIONS VIA A MULTI-TENANTON-DEMAND DATABASE SERVICE, by Craig Weissman, filed Sep. 21, 4007,which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety and for allpurposes. Invocations to applications may be detected by systemprocesses, which manage retrieving application metadata 1016 for thesubscriber making the invocation and executing the metadata as anapplication in a virtual machine.

Each application server 1000 may be communicably coupled to databasesystems, e.g., having access to system data 925 and tenant data 923, viaa different network connection. For example, one application server10001 might be coupled via the network 914 (e.g., the Internet), anotherapplication server 1000N−1 might be coupled via a direct network link,and another application server 1000N might be coupled by yet a differentnetwork connection. Transfer Control Protocol and Internet Protocol(TCP/IP) are typical protocols for communicating between applicationservers 1000 and the database system. However, other transport protocolsmay be used to optimize the system depending on the network interconnectused.

In certain embodiments, each application server 1000 is configured tohandle requests for any user associated with any organization that is atenant. Because it is desirable to be able to add and remove applicationservers from the server pool at any time for any reason, there ispreferably no server affinity for a user and/or organization to aspecific application server 1000. In some embodiments, therefore, aninterface system implementing a load balancing function (e.g., an F5Big-IP load balancer) is communicably coupled between the applicationservers 1000 and the user systems 912 to distribute requests to theapplication servers 1000. In some embodiments, the load balancer uses aleast connections algorithm to route user requests to the applicationservers 1000. Other examples of load balancing algorithms, such as roundrobin and observed response time, also can be used. For example, incertain embodiments, three consecutive requests from the same user couldhit three different application servers 1000, and three requests fromdifferent users could hit the same application server 1000. In thismanner, system 916 is multi-tenant, wherein system 916 handles storageof, and access to, different objects, data and applications acrossdisparate users and organizations.

As an example of storage, one tenant might be a company that employs asales force where each call center agent uses system 916 to manage theirsales process. Thus, a user might maintain contact data, leads data,customer follow-up data, performance data, goals and progress data,etc., all applicable to that user's personal sales process (e.g., intenant data storage 922). In an example of a MTS arrangement, since allof the data and the applications to access, view, modify, report,transmit, calculate, etc., can be maintained and accessed by a usersystem having nothing more than network access, the user can manage hisor her sales efforts and cycles from any of many different user systems.For example, if a call center agent is visiting a customer and thecustomer has Internet access in their lobby, the call center agent canobtain critical updates as to that customer while waiting for thecustomer to arrive in the lobby.

While each user's data might be separate from other users' dataregardless of the employers of each user, some data might beorganization-wide data shared or accessible by a plurality of users orall of the users for a given organization that is a tenant. Thus, theremight be some data structures managed by system 916 that are allocatedat the tenant level while other data structures might be managed at theuser level. Because an MTS might support multiple tenants includingpossible competitors, the MTS should have security protocols that keepdata, applications, and application use separate. Also, because manytenants may opt for access to an MTS rather than maintain their ownsystem, redundancy, up-time, and backup are additional functions thatmay be implemented in the MTS. In addition to user-specific data andtenant specific data, system 916 might also maintain system level datausable by multiple tenants or other data. Such system level data mightinclude industry reports, news, postings, and the like that are sharableamong tenants.

In certain embodiments, user systems 912 (which may be clientmachines/systems) communicate with application servers 1000 to requestand update system-level and tenant-level data from system 916 that mayrequire sending one or more queries to tenant data storage 922 and/orsystem data storage 924. System 916 (e.g., an application server 1000 insystem 916) automatically generates one or more SQL statements (e.g.,SQL queries) that are designed to access the desired information. Systemdata storage 924 may generate query plans to access the requested datafrom the database.

Each database can generally be viewed as a collection of objects, suchas a set of logical tables, containing data fitted into predefinedcategories. A “table” is one representation of a data object, and may beused herein to simplify the conceptual description of objects and customobjects according to some embodiments. It should be understood that“table” and “object” may be used interchangeably herein. Each tablegenerally contains one or more data categories logically arranged ascolumns or fields in a viewable schema. Each row or record of a tablecontains an instance of data for each category defined by the fields.For example, a CRM database may include a table that describes acustomer with fields for basic contact information such as name,address, phone number, fax number, etc. Another table might describe apurchase order, including fields for information such as customer,product, sale price, date, etc. In some multi-tenant database systems,standard entity tables might be provided for use by all tenants. For CRMdatabase applications, such standard entities might include tables foraccount, contact, lead, and opportunity data, each containingpre-defined fields. It should be understood that the word “entity” mayalso be used interchangeably herein with “object” and “table”.

In some multi-tenant database systems, tenants may be allowed to createand store custom objects, or they may be allowed to customize standardentities or objects, for example by creating custom fields for standardobjects, including custom index fields. U.S. Pat. No. 7,779,039, titledCUSTOM ENTITIES AND FIELDS IN A MULTI-TENANT DATABASE SYSTEM, byWeissman, et al., and which is hereby incorporated by reference in itsentirety and for all purposes, teaches systems and methods for creatingcustom objects as well as customizing standard objects in a multi-tenantdatabase system. In some embodiments, for example, all custom entitydata rows are stored in a single multi-tenant physical table, which maycontain multiple logical tables per organization. In some embodiments,multiple “tables” for a single customer may actually be stored in onelarge table and/or in the same table as the data of other customers.

These and other aspects of the disclosure may be implemented by varioustypes of hardware, software, firmware, etc. For example, some featuresof the disclosure may be implemented, at least in part, bymachine-readable media that include program instructions, stateinformation, etc., for performing various operations described herein.Examples of program instructions include both machine code, such asproduced by a compiler, and files containing higher-level code that maybe executed by the computer using an interpreter. Examples ofmachine-readable media include, but are not limited to, magnetic mediasuch as hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tape; optical media suchas CD-ROM disks; magneto-optical media; and hardware devices that arespecially configured to store and perform program instructions, such asread-only memory devices (“ROM”) and random access memory (“RAM”).

While one or more embodiments and techniques are described withreference to an implementation in which a service cloud console isimplemented in a system having an application server providing a frontend for an on-demand database service capable of supporting multipletenants, the one or more embodiments and techniques are not limited tomulti-tenant databases nor deployment on application servers.Embodiments may be practiced using other database architectures, i.e.,ORACLE®, DB2® by IBM and the like without departing from the scope ofthe embodiments claimed.

Any of the above embodiments may be used alone or together with oneanother in any combination. Although various embodiments may have beenmotivated by various deficiencies with the prior art, which may bediscussed or alluded to in one or more places in the specification, theembodiments do not necessarily address any of these deficiencies. Inother words, different embodiments may address different deficienciesthat may be discussed in the specification. Some embodiments may onlypartially address some deficiencies or just one deficiency that may bediscussed in the specification, and some embodiments may not address anyof these deficiencies.

While various embodiments have been described herein, it should beunderstood that they have been presented by way of example only, and notlimitation. Thus, the breadth and scope of the present applicationshould not be limited by any of the embodiments described herein, butshould be defined only in accordance with the following andlater-submitted claims and their equivalents.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method for determiningduplicate records in multiple objects, the method comprising:performing, by a database system, de-duplication on a first object toidentify a first group of duplicate sets of records within the firstobject and on a second object to identify a second group of duplicatesets of records within the second object, each object having a pluralityof different data fields; combining, by a database system, the recordsfrom the first group of duplicate sets of records with the records fromthe second group of duplicate sets of records to generate a third objectby mapping fields of the records of the first object to correspondingfields of the records of the second object having matching informationthat and adding filler values for fields of records of the first andsecond groups that lack matching information, the filler values enablingthe records from the first and the second groups to have a consistentstructure in the third object; associating, by the database system, anindicator field value to each record in the third object, the indicatorfield value identifying the corresponding object each of the first andsecond records originate from; performing, by the database system,de-duplication on the third object to identify duplicate record sets inthe third object, the duplicate record sets in the third object being acombined group of duplicate sets; and identifying, by the databasesystem, from the combined group of duplicate sets, at least oneduplicate record set associated with both the first object and thesecond object based on the identified duplicate record set having atleast one record with an indicator field value associated with the firstobject and at least one record with an indicator field value associatedwith the second object.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the firstobject is related to the second object based on the second objectconfigured to store information to be converted to information to bestored in the first object.
 3. The method of claim 2, furthercomprising: identifying from the combined group of duplicate sets atleast one duplicate set associated with the first object based on theduplicate set having its records all associated with the first object.4. The method of claim 3, further comprising: identifying from thecombined group of duplicate sets at least one duplicate set associatedwith the second object based on the duplicate set having its records allassociated with the second object.
 5. The method of claim 2, furthercomprising: selecting a representative record from each of the duplicatesets in the first group and in the second group.
 6. The method of claim5, wherein combining records associated with the first object withrecords associated with the second object to generate the third objectcomprises combining representative records associated with the firstobject with representative records associated with the second object. 7.An apparatus for identifying duplicate records in a database object, theapparatus comprising: one or more processors; and a non-transitorycomputer readable medium storing a plurality of instructions, which whenexecuted, cause the one or more processors to: perform de-duplication ona first object to identify a first group of duplicate sets of recordswithin the first object and on a second object to identify a secondgroup of duplicate sets of records within the second object, each objecthaving a plurality of different data fields; combine the records fromthe first group of duplicate sets of records with the records from thesecond group of duplicate sets of records to generate a third object bymapping fields of the records of the first object to correspondingfields of the records of the second object having matching informationand adding filler values for fields of records of the first and secondgroups that lack matching information, the filler values enabling therecords from the first and the second groups to have a consistentstructure in the third object; associate an indicator field value toeach record in the third object, the indicator field value identifyingthe corresponding object each of the first and second records originatefrom; perform de-duplication on the third object to identify duplicaterecord sets in the third object, the duplicate record sets in the thirdobject being a combined group of duplicate sets; and identify from thecombined group of duplicate sets, at least one duplicate record setassociated with both the first object and the second object based on theidentified duplicate record set having at least one record with anindicator field value associated with the first object and at least onerecord with an indicator field value associated with the second object.8. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the first object is related to thesecond object based on the second object configured to store informationto be converted to information to be stored in the first object.
 9. Theapparatus of claim 8, further comprising: identify from the combinedgroup of duplicate sets, at least one duplicate set associated with thefirst object based on the duplicate set having its records allassociated with the first object; and identify from the combined groupof duplicate sets, at least one duplicate set associated with the secondobject based on the duplicate set having its records all associated withthe second object.
 10. The apparatus of claim 8, further comprising:select a representative record from each of the duplicate sets in thefirst group and in the second group of duplicate sets.
 11. The apparatusof claim 10, wherein combining records associated with the first objectwith records associated with the second object to generate the thirdobject comprises combining representative records associated with thefirst object with representative records associated with the secondobject.
 12. A computer program product comprising computer-readableprogram code to be executed by one or more processors when retrievedfrom a non-transitory computer-readable medium, the program codeincluding instructions to: perform de-duplication on a first object toidentify a first group of duplicate sets of records within the firstobject and on a second object to identify a second group of duplicatesets of records within the second object, each object having a pluralityof different data fields; combine the records from the first group ofduplicate sets of records with the records from the second group ofduplicate sets of records to generate a third object by mapping fieldsof the records of the first object to corresponding fields of therecords of the second object having matching information and addingfiller values for fields of records of the first and second groups thatlack matching information, the filler values enabling the records fromthe first and the second groups to have a consistent structure in thethird object; associate an indicator field value to each record in thethird object, the indicator field value identifying the correspondingobject each of the first and second records originate from; performde-duplication on the third object to identify duplicate record sets inthe third object, the duplicate record sets in the third object being acombined group of duplicate sets; and identify from the combined groupof duplicate sets, at least one duplicate record set associated withboth the first object and the second object based on the identifiedduplicate record set having at least one record with an indicator fieldvalue associated with the first object and at least one record with anindicator field value associated with the second object.
 13. Thecomputer program product of claim 12, wherein the first object isrelated to the second object based on the second object configured tostore information that can be converted to information to be stored inthe first object.
 14. The computer program product of claim 13, furthercomprising: identify from the combined group of duplicate sets, at leastone duplicate set associated with the first object based on theduplicate set having its records all associated with the first object;and identify from the combined group of duplicate sets, at least oneduplicate set associated with the second object based on the duplicateset having its records all associated with the second object.
 15. Thecomputer program product of claim 13, further comprising: select arepresentative record from each of the duplicate sets in the first groupand in the second group of duplicate sets.
 16. The computer programproduct of claim 15, wherein combining records associated with the firstobject with records associated with the second object to generate thethird object comprises combining representative records associated withthe first object with representative records associated with the secondobject.
 17. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the firstobject is related to the second object based on the first object and thesecond object having at least one field configured to store similarinformation.